Carmen was newly pregnant when I painted her portrait. She was one of the Yelapa beauties and had been wanting a baby for so long, her sisters had already had a few. Even though she was the youngest of all the beautiful sisters, she was eager to have babies just like them. I had been told that her father was very handsome and that is why the girls were so gorgeous. He had taken off to California with all the girls and a new woman, abandoning their mother, Maria, in Chapala. Carmen and her beautiful sisters spent their formative years in California but the father sent them back to Mexico because they had begun to run with a wild crowd up there as they grew older. This seems to have added much to their personalities as Carmen and her sisters were worldly in an unassuming way, they spoke only Spanish in Mexico and had an independent flair and were quite uncontrollable. I remember one night of the full moon, climbing the rocks and mountains of the pueblo with Margo, the aunt, in search of one of Carmen´s cousins who had disappeared while at the disco. Quite caliente, they rushed the cousin back to Chapala the next day, Sunday. The sisters had followed their Aunt Margo to Yelapa when she was released from prison and there they stayed, oblivious to the stir that they caused and the frustration among the young hoods who tried to conquer them, oblivious to the envidia, the outright envy of the pueblo women, free to do what they wanted whenever they felt like it without the least concern for the mores of this small indigenous village by the sea. So when I asked Carmen to pose for a portrait, she was willing and took it all in stride. She was a nervous mother to be. There was no father around and only her sisters to help her and help her they did, when the time came. This is the painting that was chosen by National Geographic to be used in a story they published in their book, The Edge. I last saw Carmen on TV, sitting around her pool with her children, being interviewed about her husband, who is now in jail in Texas for the murder of his first wife. Yes, we had worried about Carmen.
